The Optimist's Daughter, Part 1, Chapters 1 - 4

I confess, I was disappointed when I first saw that The Optimist's Daughter, by Eudora Welty, was number one on the list. I have never really gotten into Southern fiction as a literary genre. On top of that, I had read this book before, the summer before I went to college, and it hadn't really made a huge impression on me. In fact, just last winter, I sold my copy to a used bookstore. But here I am, having bought it back from the same used book store, reading it.

It begins in New Orleans, in a hospital. (As an aside, reading about hospital rooms in New Orleans reminds me of those who were stranded there - both in the city and in the hospitals - during Katrina). Laurel McKelva has returned to the South to help her father, Judge McKelva, who is having trouble with his eye. Judge McKelva is the optimist of the book's title. Laurel's mother is dead and her father has married Fay, a classic gold-digger if ever one was presented in literature. The first section of the book presents the reader with the aftermath of the Judge's operation.

His recovery takes place during the period leading up to Mardi Gras, and throughout the chapters, the reader is well aware of the contrast between the revelry outside and the somberness inside the hospital.

The Judge, the optimist, is failing and his failing appears to be somewhat willful. That is certainly the impression that Fay, who wants to join the party outside, has. This part of the book culminates with Fay attacking her husband in his hospital bed. While waiting to see what happens - both to the Judge and to Fay - we are also treated to a family straight out of Southern caricature but one with whom Fay feels a kinship, while Laurel does not. Chapter 4 closes with the Judge's death and with Laurel and Fay returning his body, by train, to Mississippi.